What One Writer's Wrought

33 years ago today, legendary civil rights icon and activist Bayard Rustin passed away. He was 75. Dig this! One of his most important contributions was introducing the Gandhian concept of non-violence to the civil-rights movement. He "provided Dr. King with a deep understanding of nonviolent ideas and tactics at a time when King had only an academic familiarity with Gandhi." "A close advisor to Martin Luther King and one of the most influential and effective organizers of the civil rights movement, Rustin was affectionately referred to as _Mr. March-on-Washington_ by A. Philip Randolph" (the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters).   Rustin's having survived most of the 20th century while living in the United States as an openly gay black man also adds a layer of the incredible to his incredible life-story.   The involvement of his grandmother, Julia Davis Rustin, in the NAACP meant that Rustin's childhood home was often visited by movement lumi...

It is exceedingly rare these days to come across anywhere the idea that we — our species, our friends and family, you reading this, and me the writer (all members of Homo sapiens ) — are, literally, animals. This essence of our animality (our being mammals, and primates) is like a shameful secret which we have been urged or conditioned to deny and forget. Christianity told its followers ( Gen 1:26 ) to go out and dominate the fishes, the birds, the cattle, and (just to be clear) the whole world (not forgetting that which creepeth), all of which quite conveniently cleared the way for the arrival of capitalism, which invited its practitioners to go out and plunder: treat everything in the world as nothing more than a source of riches. Go forth and divine a plan to make money from mountaintops, riverbeds, ocean floors, and genetic inheritances. Lately I’ve been reading Becoming Wild: How animal cultures raise families, create beauty and achieve peace , by Carl Safina (2020)...